Lightning Storm at Albany, Western Australia

Lightning has always been on my photography "bucket list". I have tried a few times to go "storm chasing", always ending in epic fail and bunkering down in a cafe/restaurant instead. Well, all that changed on my visit to Albany, where I had gone to visit a friend (Tina Bartley, a fabulous local Albany photographer). The plan was two days of pretty much non-stop camera action.

There were some awesome clouds around during the afternoon, and a few showers. We were shooting sunset at a nearby beach (more of those images to come), when we noticed amazing light over The Gap, and distant lightning. We quickly headed over there, scrambling out of the car to get some shots before the light changed. Amazingly (as I'm not usually favoured by the weather gods) the lightning show really kicked off right in front of us, and fortunately the rain hadn't quite reached us.

The following images are single images, not stacked.

Lightning Storm 2

Lightning Storm 1

Shortly after the above image the lightning made a beeline for us, and struck just off the rocks we were standing on. Incredibly loud, and way too close for comfort (you could feel the electric charge) we grabbed our gear and ran (after Tina got up off the floor, her survival instincts clearly better than mine!).

Unperturbed, we relocated a safe distance away on the other side of the port, and here is a composite of 3 strikes from there:-